Twitter extends 140 character limit for Direct Messages

Twitter has scrapped the 140-character limit on Direct Messages.

Twitter, which was mostly about letting the world know your thoughts in all of 140 characters, the limit for short messages, also had a lesser known feature, which allowed people to chat away from the sight of trolls.

The new limit had been set to 10,000 characters, leaving  commentators speculating whether the micro-blogging platform wanted to morph into an email service.

Earlier this year, Twitter launched Group Direct Messages, in what it called moves ''to help users connect more easily and directly on Twitter with other users, causes and businesses''.

According to a release, the update would roll-out to all users on Twitter.com, TweetDeck and Twitter-owned-and-operated applications.

According to commentators, as the competition intensified from the likes of Facebook and other popular message apps including WhatsApp, Twitter was apparently trying to keep pace.

Sachin Agarwal, Twitter's product manager for direct messages said users would now have the flexibility to write longer and express themselves in a more natural and comfortable way.

The direct message expansion announcement comes with Twitter trying to make the site more engaging and easier to use, something that its top executives openly admitted late last month it had been struggling with.

It was betting high that other features including the much-anticipated Project Lightning, would bring in new users as also a new content deal with the National Football League. Project Lightning would highlight trending events by running a series of photos, videos and other tweets.

The company was also in the midst of looking for a new leader as interim CEO Jack Dorsey, who replaced Dick Costolo last month, said he would not leave his full-time role as chief of Square, the mobile-payments company he founded after Twitter that is getting ready for an IPO according t reports.

Dorsey said on Monday that he bought over 31,000 shares of Twitter, worth about $875,000, sending a strong signal to investors he believed in the company's future.

Twitter is clearly betting big on private messaging. The company announced in its developer blog, that it would scrap the 140-character limit on direct messaging and allow users to send direct messages that were 10,000 characters long. (See: Twitter to hike character limit from 140 to 10,000).